"04 - Mortal Remains in Maggody Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hess Joan)

"And we're still betrothed, even if you don't want to go out to Boone Creek to count the lightning bugs?"

The pity dried up real quick. "I told you that we're gonna behave like respectable folks now that we're betrothed. Last time you let the devil creep into your soul, it was about the worst week in my entire life, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon. If it ever happens again, you'll find yourself on your knees asking Raz's prize sow to be your awful wedded wife."

She refused to talk to him on the drive home, and climbed out of the car without so much as a peck on the cheek. The house shook as she stomped across the porch and through the door.

"Women!" Kevin said to himself as he backed out of the driveway, flattening a dozen chrysanthemums in the process, and drove back toward town. As he went past Raz Buchanon's place, he remembered the brutality of his beloved's remark. An ice pick stabbed his heart. He decided he needed some advice from someone who understood women. That ruled out his pa, and he sure couldn't go asking his ma about counting lightning bugs by the creek, but at last he thought of someone.

...

"Who does she think she is?" Hal Desmond barked from behind his desk. "Get me the last contract, Carlotta. She took three points last time. Why in God's name does she think she deserves six now? What's she done--grown another breast?"

Carlotta did not leap to her feet and dash into the front room of the office to find the contract under discussion. She was much too enured to these petty and petulent tirades, and less than impressed with them. Hal was redfaced, but what else was new? He was trembling so hard that his curly brown toupee was liable to slip off his head, but who cared? She, along with other distaff members of the production company, had seen him without the toupee or anything else, and none of them had found the result worthy of discussion.

Crossing her legs, she settled back in the chair and said, "Gwenneth's heard rumors that actors actually get paid salaries, as in scale minimum and more. I told you to keep her locked in the basement between pictures. You're the one who insisted on escorting her to the hot new places and displaying her at parties. An extra three points seems to be the price of having cleavage hanging on your arm, Hal."

Hal lit a cigarette and regained control of himself, which wasn't all that hard, since his tantrums were perfunctory. He was a producer and a director. He had an artistic temperament. He was the one who made it happen. He had a full head of expensive hair, a keen grasp of the industry, a Jaguar, a house on the beach, and a herd of lackies to jump when he snapped his fingers. Except for Carlotta, he amended with a grunt. If she weren't so damn efficient, she'd have been cinematic history a long time ago.

He blew a plume of smoke in her direction. "I took Gwenneth to Marty--what's his last name? Anyway, I took her to Marty's to stir up some interest in the flick. I've got to go through Marty to get to the distributor, and I've got to get to the distributor if we want Prickly Passion to be shown in the passion pits of America."

"Did Gwenneth make it with Marty?"

"I don't know," he admitted. He would have run his fingers through his hair had it been possible. "I told her to, and I threw him a few stories about her undeniable prowess. Gave him the tape with the outtakes of her and Frederick when they were, shall we say, ad-libbing to excess? If she'll ad-lib like that with Marty, he'll persuade Cinerotica to pick up the film in a big way, and we might see some money for our effort."

"You're a pimp."

"Yeah." He jabbed out his cigarette and gestured at her. After a moment of thought about her schedule for the evening, she took a cassette of Prickly Passion from a shelf, loaded and activated the VCR, and went behind the desk to massage his fleshy neck. As she did so, she realized her fingers could not reach around it. A shame.

Outside, headlights streamed down the boulevard like lemmings heading for the sea.

...

"Why would anyone want to make a movie in Maggody?"

"I don't know," I said as I passed the box of greasy popcorn to Sergeant John Plover of the Arkansas State Police. "Why would anyone forget to clean the windshield before inviting someone to accompany him to the drive-in movie?"

"There're a lot of bugs between Maggody and here. How was I to know they were suicidal? But tell me more about this movie business, Arly."

I glanced at the totality of my social life. He was good-looking in a sneaky way, with shaggy blond hair, a crooked nose, a quirky smile, and a dimple that appeared when he was trying not to laugh. The dimple was on display at the moment. I retrieved the popcorn and said, "Some little company from California. Ruby Bee told me its name, but I didn't recognize it. It's not MGM or Disney. The cast and crew are slated to reside in the Flamingo Motel."

"That many, huh?"

I checked the screen to see if the giant carnivorous cricket had leveled Tokyo yet."And they didn't demand cots and rollaways, so they can't be more than ten of them. I suppose they chose Arkansas because it's cheap and they can get away with nonunion labor."

"Choosing Arkansas is not inexplicable, but choosing Maggody is," Plover said amiably. It was his most irritating trait--this good-humored, easygoing amiability of ol' Sergeant Complaisancy. It carried us along from week to week, but I was increasingly aware that I knew very little about his inner convolutions. Maybe he didn't have any. A soul of silk, perhaps.

I was about to agree with his remark when my beeper went off. "I'd better call in," I muttered. "Ruby Bee's likely to have developed a hangnail or some such tragedy. Let me know if Cricko eats anybody."

I used the pay telephone outside the concession stand, and came back to the car with a scowl. Slamming the door hard enough to cause heads to pop up in backseats all around us, I said, "There's another fire between Maggody and Hasty. Harve wants me to meet him there."